Yvonne Bauer is the fifth generation of her family to run Bauer Media Group, whose portfolio includes some 600 magazines, 400 digital products and 50 radio and TV stations worldwide. The company traces its roots to 1875, when lithographer Ludolph Bauer opened a print shop for business cards in Hamburg. Yvonne's father, Heinz Heinrich Bauer, began the company's international expansion with the 1981 launch of the first weekly women's magazine in the U.S., Woman's World. (Other Bauer titles include In Touch and First for Women.) Today, Bauer -- Europe's largest magazine publisher, focused primarily on a female demographic -- has a presence in 16 countries, with approximately 11,000 employees on its payroll and annual revenues exceeding $2.6 billion. Yvonne studied German philology at the University of Bamberg and went on to apprentice at the publishing house Hoffmann and Campe, before starting her career at Bauer in 2005. She took the reins in 2010, after her father transferred 85% of the business to her. Her older sisters Mirja, Nicola and Saskia each own 5%, and Heinz Bauer remains a general partner. Although "We think popular" is the company's tag line, reflecting its passion for interpreting popular culture, Yvonne can be outspoken on weighty issues such as press freedom. "To preserve this freedom and ensure that we will remain free to choose what we want to read in the future," she declared in a note on Bauer Media Group's home page, "we will have to interact with one another in a tolerant and openminded fashion. By endorsing this campaign in our magazines, we are putting down a clear market in support of freedom of the press and freedom of expression." More »

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